About the company

• What is this company doing?

  Developing games for Linux.

• Why?

  Linux games suck.

• So?

  If you are like me, you know many people who would like to switch to Linux and Free Software, but are held back by the relative scarcity of "quality" Linux games. You may not agree with me that Linux games are, in general, missing something, but you cannot dispute that there are too few good games for Linux. Consequently, you must agree that for some reason, our community is less successful at producing this type of software (even if you disagree with me as to why). The Sixth Floor Labs is our way of attempting to shift this balance through the introduction of a capital subsidy, determined by the market.

• How?

  Financially: it's called the Ransom Model. It's summarized in our about pages, and some details are given towards bottom of this page.

  Technically: Python, Pygame, ODE, and PyODE.

• Who?

  Us.

• When?

  Ethan started work on a currently-abandoned game called 'contraption' in May of 2006. He started work on what became alexandria in September of that year. Carl started doing artwork in December or January. We hope to "go live" August 15th, 2007, but who knows?

• Why not a 3d game?

  Ethan's laptop has an ATI Mobility 9600, which is sort-of-supported by the r300 driver, but not really well enough to pursue 3d game development.

  More generally, Linux 3d graphics support is so spotty that we might potentially lose a huge section of our market if we limit ourselves to 3d games. We're really excited to break into 3d games, but we're not there yet.

• Are you hiring?

  Not at present. We're waiting to see how our finances stabilize first.

• Do you have any cool 6FL gear that I can pay for the privilege of wearing?

  Sadly, we don't yet. We're still looking into merchandising, just like all the other cool Internet businesses. If you're interested in a t-shirt or something, please let us know so we can effectively gauge demand!

About the site

• What is the site running?

  This is a modified version of ikiwiki. Patches are in their website. Basically, Ethan made changes to enable more of a blogging style.

• Why ikiwiki?

  It seemed that rendering static HTML might be nice in case we ever get slashdotted.

• What about the header graphic?

  That picture was one taken by Esther Cheung, sometime around 1999 or 2000, and called "An Empty 6th". She has graciously provided permission for us to use it on this site.

  The glowing white spots are not meant to look like a skull! That's actually a backpack with two reflective parts. The image (as used in the header) is at http://www.sixthfloorlabs.com/layout/6fl/empty-6th-fade-right.png.

Ransom model

• Isn't what you're doing illegal?

  Not as far as we know. The mechanisms involved are:

  • If a program A is a derivative work of a GPLed program, program A must also be GPLed.
  • It is not required that we provide you with copies of GPLed programs that we have.
  • It is not only allowed, but encouraged, that programmers ask as much money as the market will bear in exchange for copies of GPLed works.

  So, we are selling one copy of a GPLed program for a significant amount of money. Once this copy is sold, of course, we can't and don't want to restrict the flow of this program. But until then, we are under no obligation to give out copies.

  Please note! Nothing in the GPL itself forbids placing software under the GPL and then selling copies; this is explicitly allowed by the FSF in the GPL FAQ. In fact, the FSF has sold copies of their software in the past. However, if someone has a copy of the GPLed software, they are allowed to distribute it free of charge. Many of, for instance, the Slashdot crowd act as though the GPL forbids making money from licensed software, but this does not reflect the license itself.

• Why aren't you making your work available gratis, like all other open source projects?

  Because we didn't want to be like other open source projects. Specifically, if you look at open source games, with a few notable exceptions, most of them aren't very satisfying, don't have a lot of depth, lack polish, or something like that. We haven't run the statistics, but we'd guess that Sourceforge is littered with the corpses of abandoned game concepts. It is our belief that open source game development isn't as successful as other open source development for unavoidable, structural reasons. Namely: although you might write a word processor to make your life easier, playing a game you made yourself is much less fun than playing a game someone else has written. So we intend to broaden the Linux game scene by making games in a for-profit way.

  There are other "professional" games available for Linux that exist in varying states of non-freeness. It is our belief that an open source game is a benefit for a user the same way open source software of other types is a benefit for the user: namely, better integration with the operating system, better legacy support when the game becomes outdated, etc. So although we are selling our work for profit, we are also releasing the result as Free Software, so you benefit.

• $40,000 is way too much!

  Ethan has played through the upcoming "healbeam" campaign. As lead developer of a game that isn't very popular, he stakes a claim to being the best Project: Alexandria player in the world. He estimates that you can play through and "beat" the healbeam campaign in 2 hours. This is almost certainly an underestimate; you will probably take longer. But consider that going to see a movie costs about $10 and also provides at most 2 hours of entertainment. Doesn't a $10 donation seem reasonable?

  Remember that Blender was purchased for 100,000 EUR (about $150,000 US) andn the Free Ryzom campaign raised 170,000 EUR (about $250,000 US). We think by comparison, $40,000 is not an awful lot.

• $40,000 is way too cheap!

  It's true that Project Alexandria represents almost a year's worth of work from two people. Even granting that they haven't been working full-time on this project, it's still a long time. In New York City, a year's salary for a programmer is around $60k. So it's easy to get the idea that Carl, Ethan and Andrew are selling themselves a bit cheap.

  The truth is, they are! But they also know they're starting a business, and in a business's youth, profits are hard to come by. To build interest in the Sixth Floor Labs and to build a name as purveyors of quality electronic entertainment, we're selling "at a loss" in order to encourage take-up of the game. If we are drowned in enthusiastic demand for our work, we'll probably slowly increase the price on later installments. But it is our devout hope that later campaigns will be easier and faster to develop than the healbeam campaign, and that our increased speed will make this business more cost-effective.

• What if I donate but the ransom goal never gets reached?

  microPledges lets you pledge money before the goal is reached, and only place it "in trust" when the goal is reached. If the goal is not reached, our choices are to settle for what we have raised, or to give up. If we give up, you haven't lost anything.

• What if Ethan grabs the money and heads for Cuba?

  microPledges doesn't give us the money until a vote of the pledgers agrees that we've done what we said we would. Besides, Ethan is an upstanding gentleman and would never do such a thing.

• What happens if someone else takes your engine and decides to build their own level set for it? Or, worse yet, take your half-finished story between level sets and start developing it themselves?

  We'd love to see other people's takes on our story or our game. We'd love to receive patches. We don't really expect either of those things to occur, but if it does, our product still has value; you'd be paying for our own unique artistic direction. Whether that's worth paying for or not is still to be seen, though we hope the training levels will give you some clue.

• What's to stop someone from making their own ransom game company?

  We expect being the second "ransom games for Linux" company is going to be harder than being the first, but we'd love to have competition in this space.

• Where did you get the idea?

  I'm not sure as to the entire history of the idea of the ransom model, but as far as I know, it originates with the Blender project. As the history details, the Blender Foundation purchased the rights to Blender in October 2002 from its investors for 100,000 EUR (about $150,000 US).

  Neither are we the first to apply this to games: the original idea comes from some developers who made a game called Meatbot Massacre and sold it under ransom in September 2005. Also, the Free Ryzom campaign (now the Virtual Citizenship Association) made a bid to purchase the Ryzom game, raising 170,000 EUR (about $250,000 US) in pledges.

  If you're looking up the Ransom Model, you might also look up the Street Performer Protocol, which is the name some cryptographers have used to describe a formal protocol much like the ransom model.

  Also preceding us in this area are various pledge/bounty sites: microPledge, BountySource, Bounty County. We're handling the money through microPledge, but you may also be interested in Fundable.net.